On 09/16/2011 12:39 PM, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote:
> The same thing applies in microwave and RF design. There's all kinds of
> tools out there to do the analysis, but a lot of good design is just
> experience and knowing how to put the parts together. So there are these
> little companies that specialize in some fairly narrow specialty (e.g.
> Krytar for diode detectors, Marki for mixers, Spacek for amplifiers,
> Wenzel for oscillators). The troubling thing is that when the one or two
> people at the company who really know how to do things decide to retire or
> die, the company will usually be bought up, but will be restricted to
> making copies of things they've done before. And it takes some years
> before the word gets out.. "Oh, Bob's no longer there, so don't bother
> going to them for a custom"
That process many not be modelling, but it's still engineering, in my
book. It's trial and error, but engineers are making the decisions
about the next trials based on previous results, and their engineering
training/experience, right? I'm sure all the top vendors do this sort of
thing with their servers to test the limits of them.
>> However, as Prentice points out in his anecdote, there's an awful lot of
> "rack n stack" vendors out there who are just plain ignorant. And
> ignorance is fine, as LONG as the buyer knows they're thermal design
> ignorant.
>>
And few things can detect bad thermal design as quickly a few racks of
cluster nodes running pinned for days!
I always enjoyed my classes in heat and momentum transport in college.
Too bad I do sysadmin and not science these days. I hope Dave shares his
final design and experimental data with us when he's done.
--
Prentice
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